


russian roulette

by youcallitwinter



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-13
Updated: 2013-03-13
Packaged: 2017-12-05 05:29:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/719399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youcallitwinter/pseuds/youcallitwinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>And salve each other's wounds with love. If it was love</i>. “Old enough,” she says, the practiced seduction slipping into teenage defiance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	russian roulette

**Author's Note:**

> Poem: _The Evidence/Prologue_ by Erica M. Jong  
>  Set: Post Season Five, Pre Season Six

_Evidence of life:_

_that we could meet for the first time,_

_open our scars & stitches to each other,_

_weave our legs around_

_each other's patchwork dreams_

_& try to salve each other's wounds with love._

 

_if it was love._

 

 

He runs out of two centuries of remembered lullabies two days into it.

And then he’s just black leather and cigarette smoke and a whole host of  _fuck sorry, bit, couldn’t save her, couldn’t do anything, should've been me—_  
  
Why should you have saved her, she wants to ask, because she's not real and he's dead and they have no right to mourn when there are people both real and alive who loved her too.

Instead, she sits by the foot of her bed and lets her hair hang in front of her face, like she used to when she was very little.  (She was never very little.)

“It’s okay,” she says, forgives instead of being forgiven. It’s easier to do that.

 

 

::

 

 

Some days, she’s six months old. Some days, she’s a million.

“Old enough,” she says, the practiced seduction slipping into easy defiance. Seeping through her bones till her whole body is nothing but defiance of everything she was made of; memories and bright green light.

“Not if you have to say that, you aren’t,” he replies.

She glares at him, fingernails biting into palm, before turning away, “whatever.”

Some days, she’s fifteen.

 

 

::

 

 

The bit asks him over and over, her voice low, breathy, like all she knows about it, she learnt from the telly.

It’s only this one time when he comes back from the hunt and she’s sitting on his crypt.

“Please,” she says, just once, brittle bones and sharp angles, no longer playing dress-up, “ _Please_.”

 _Isn’t right_ , he thinks,  _wouldn’t do that, not to you, sweet bit. Good men don’t—_

 _Wouldn’t do that_ , he thinks when he’s inside her,  _wouldn’t do that,_ he thinks when she’s around him.  _Good men don’t—_

 

 

::

 

 

She moves away whenever he touches her reverentially. It’s the only way he’s ever known how.

Drusilla (mad and lost and alone and broken and sliced and  _Spike, Ms. Edith has been so naughty today)_ and Buffy (she falls and falls and he’s never even touched her and still she falls and falls and—) and the only way he’s ever known how.

“No.”

She hides her face in her hair and he strokes her and he almost hates her with a love so strong it’s every woman he’s ever loved and hated and now she’s here and it’s the only way he’s known how.

 _Good men don’t—_  
  
(See, here’s the thing to know about him: he’s not a good man. He’s not good. He’s not a man.)

 

 

::

 

 

He bruises her once. And he touches it again and again like he can’t believe he did it and he says  _sorry_ again and again till it’s jumbled in her head and she’s not sure what the word means anymore.

She doesn’t say she doesn’t mind because he likes to believe she does. And the only way she believes these days is if he does.

She fills the gaps in the head within the unending litany of his apologies sorrysorry _sorry._

_Sorry—I couldn’t save—sorry sweet bit, broke—sorry—never loved—sorry—I hurt you so—sorry—sorry—_

 

 

::

 

 

 _Good girls don’t_ — a teacher she’d never had, had once said in some grade she was never in.

Drusilla—Buffy—Spike likes fixing things. She knows this. And, it follows, Spike likes broken things. He slips his fingers inside her and maybe turns the key a little because she can function for a while afterwards. She’s a wind-up doll.

 _Good girls don’t_ —

(See, here’s the thing to know about her: she’s not a good girl. She’s not good. She’s not a girl.)

 

 

::

 

 

 

 

 

_If it was lust or hunger_

_& not love,_

_if it was all that they accused us of_

_(that we accused ourselves)--_

_I do not think it matters._

::

 


End file.
